


Back To You

by spiders_n



Series: The Fruit of Boredom - Quarantine 2k20 [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Dealing With Trauma, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Husbands helping each other grow, I dusted Pepper i'm sorry, M/M, Married stony, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, it's the only way i could justify not making them a throuple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:07:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23490670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiders_n/pseuds/spiders_n
Summary: The thing is, living has always meant regretting something or another. He’s a soldier, he understands regret — understands that it’s an inevitability, a side effect of being the kind of person who tries. But he’d always been a firm believer that you get to choose what you have to regret, and he’d always had faith in himself to choose correctly. And he had. Every time until the time that counted the most.orSteve is frequently visited by the ghosts of his mistakes but he always finds his way back to the people he loves.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: The Fruit of Boredom - Quarantine 2k20 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1682332
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	Back To You

**Author's Note:**

> This is a love letter to my dear friend Amira, who needed some angst. 
> 
> A, I love you so so much, and I hope this satisfies your craving. 
> 
> I'm so sorry to everyone else.

In the years that follow Tony’s miraculous return to Earth after the snap, there are so many moments where Steve wishes he could go back in time and tell his past self to just get over his pride and return home. He thinks about how differently things would have gone with Thanos, how much more prepared they’d have been as a unit if they were a unit at the start of it all. He thinks about the love of his life adrift in space — alone — and sure of his own death. Staring it down with the kind of heartbreaking defiance that only Tony could muster. He thinks about family and what it would have meant for him to have one — a complete one — without the pain of absence and the longing for something that he knew — deep down — he’d have chosen to leave behind.

Sometimes, when it’s far past midnight and he’s forced Tony out of his workshop, when he’s wrapped him up in bed safe and tight in his arms, he stays awake and he just thinks.

There are worlds where nothing like this ever happened. There are worlds where Steve made better decisions, had chosen wiser paths, ones where honesty was his policy. Where love wasn’t a qualifier for deception. He could see those worlds in his mind on those nights he spends with Tony lovingly tucked under him. He looks down at the man who changed the way he understood love and he can see all the places his life could have taken him. 

The thing is, living has always meant regretting something or another. He’s a soldier, he understands regret — understands that it’s an inevitability, a side effect of being the kind of person who tries. But he’d always been a firm believer that you get to choose what you have to regret, and he’d always had faith in himself to choose correctly. And he had. Every time until the time that counted the most. 

The wakeful nights always draw him back to before Thanos, before the accords, before they’d lost half of everything they’d loved. He remembers the way he saw the world then. He was so confident in his team, so self righteous in his belief that they were doing the right things for the right reasons. He was misguided — he knows that now. 

He saw Bucky’s face and from that moment on there wasn’t a single part of him that was thinking clearly. He became compromised. 

The realistic part of his brain always supplies him with little pockets of truth when he lands on that thought. He reminds himself that he would have disagreed with Tony about the accords anyway — but the truth is — they would have been able to come to a peaceful resolution if he hadn’t lost sight of the real situation. If it hadn’t been Bucky they were going after. 

That’s where he’d gone wrong. That’s where he took the step he could never take back, and that’s what he has to live with now. That’s the regret he’s chosen. 

He can see everything that happened after that like a line of dominos falling on each other, one after the other until they’re all splattered to the floor in a portrait of destruction. The greatest lesson in cause and effect he could ever get, and also the most costly. 

The things that he hid from Tony were the downfall of the universe and he’s going to have to live out the rest of his life knowing that to be true. 

Steve gets so caught up wishing. He wants so badly to go back to himself and scream. He’ll catch the moonlight shining down on their bed, casting shadows on Tony’s eyelashes onto his face and he’ll want to find his past self and shake him. If he could just go back and tell him — to make himself understand — that the real thing that he wants, the truth about what he needs is a partner. A husband. The one he has now, except maybe if he’d realized that sooner, one without all the baggage of the past few years. One that hadn’t looked into his child’s face as he died. And Steve wouldn’t have had to watch his best friend, his soulmate fall into the wind. 

If he could make himself understand that loving Bucky didn’t have to mean hurting Tony then there could have been a universe where he could have loved them both. Could have had them both in his life. If he had trusted Tony more. If he had given him the benefit of the doubt and just offered up honesty as readily as he’d offered up mistrust. 

It could have been Bucky by his side as he slid the ring onto Tony’s finger and Tony could have had the kid. Could have had Pepper. 

Sometimes Steve thinks about this stuff and there’s no one there to stop him. He plays over the what ifs and he goes somewhere deep inside himself and stays. He runs in circles around limericks and riddles, clues he should have picked up and signs he should have recognized, and they all lead him back to a deep rooted fear of himself. Of how he could have done such supremely hurtful things with such awful consequences. He lives and breathes regret. 

Other times — and as the months and years pass, it becomes most of the time — he’s pulled out of that spiral. Shaken out of his thoughts by Tony tossing in his bed or by Natasha’s soft hand on his back on the nights where the regret leads him to the gym, walking through scenarios to the sounds of blows to a punching bag. 

His original family — the first one he’d found after the ice — is still there with him, all of them dealing with their own domino splatter of destruction and regret, and like they’d done in the beginning, they hold each other together. For reasons unknown to them all, they get to have this. Eachother. And for him and Tony more than anyone else, it means a do-over, a second chance at the life they should have given each other from the start. 

Against all odds Tony had forgiven him. He’d lost his mind, said his piece, handed Steve his heart, and nearly died, but in the end, he’d forgiven Steve for what he’d done to him and gave Steve the opportunity to forgive himself. And together they work hard to help each other do just that. Forgive themselves for the things they’d done and the things they shouldn’t have. For what it ended up costing the world. 

They fight to figure out a way forward by working to let go of the past. 

Steve pulls Tony away from his dark place, the one deep inside himself that Steve knows he wonders into everyday in the workshops, breathing in the dust under Peter’s silhouette, waiting for the comforting click of Pepper’s heels on his hard wood that he’ll never hear again. And Tony does the same for Steve. 

On the nights when it’s the worst and the weight of all he’s done and lost paralyzes Steve in the bed, Tony is there beside him, waiting to bring him back to the real world, where things are at least as good as they are bad, and time is working it’s healing magic. 

Those nights Tony’s voice guides him out of his regret one step at a time. The man talks to him about nothing that matters and then walks with him through everything that does until the only thoughts left in Steve’s head are of things that infect him with a sense of love and belonging. He looks into the eyes of the man he loves, the eyes of his husband, and he remembers a time when the thought of ever being able to do that was such a ludicrous impossibility that he’d wanted to die. He feels Tony’s weight in his arms and the crackle of his voice down his spine and remembers all the nights he longed for a place that felt as right as the one he has next to Tony. He reminds himself that time heals all things in the end, and there are forces at play he has no control over. He fights hard to hold onto those feelings as they come. 

Those nights, Tony’s voice is loving and rough, like it always has been. He looks into Steve’s eyes with a pleading expression like he wants something but doesn’t know if Steve can give it to him. It’s the same words every night “Where are you going right now?” He asks. 

And even from the deepest pits of hell, when Steve is covered in darkness and despair, his brain registers the words, the voice, the presence as a lifeline, and he says the same thing back every time. 

“Back to you.” 


End file.
